The same law is illustrated in driving.  “I cannot drive, it tires me so,” is a common complaint.  Why does it tire you?  Because instead of yielding entirely and freely to the seat of the carriage first, and then to its motion, you try to help the horses, or to hold yourself still while the carriage is moving.  A man should become one with a carriage in driving, as much as one with his horse in riding.  Notice the condition in any place where there is excuse for some anxiety,—­while going rather sharply round a corner, or nearing a railroad track.  If your feet are not pressed forcibly against the floor of the carriage, the tension will be somewhere else.  You are using nervous force to no earthly purpose, and to great earthly loss.  Where any tension is necessary to make things better, it will assert itself naturally and more truly as we learn to drop all useless and harmful tension.  Take a patient suffering from nervous prostration for a long drive, and you will bring him back more nervously prostrated; even the fresh air will not counteract the strain that comes from not knowing how to relax to the motion of the carriage.

A large amount of nervous energy is expended unnecessarily while waiting.  If we are obliged to wait for any length of time, it does not hurry the minutes or bring that for which we wait to keep nervously strained with impatience; and it does use vital force, and so helps greatly toward “Americanitis.”  The strain which comes from an hour’s nervous waiting, when simply to let yourself alone and keep still would answer much better, is often equal to a day’s labor.  It must be left to individuals to discover how this applies in their own especial cases, and it will be surprising to see not only how great and how common such strain is, but how comparatively easy it is to drop it.  There are of course exceptional times and states when only constant trying and thoughtful watchfulness will bring any marked result.

We have taken a few examples where there is nothing to do but keep quiet, body and brain, from what should be the absolute rest of sleep to the enforced rest of waiting. just one word more in connection with waiting and driving.  You must catch a certain train.  Not having time to trust to your legs or the cars, you hastily take a cab.  You will in your anxiety keep up exactly the same strain that you would have had in walking,—­as if you could help the carriage along, or as if reaching the station in time depended upon your keeping a rigid spine and tense muscles.  You have hired the carriage to take you, and any activity on your part is quite unnecessary until you reach the station; why not keep quiet and let the horses do the work, and the driver attend to his business?

It would be easy to fill a small volume with examples of the way in which we are walking directly into nervous prostration; examples only of this one variety of disobedience,—­namely, of the laws of_ rest._ And to give illustrations of all the varieties of disobedience to Nature’s laws in activity would fill not one small book, but several large ones; and then, unless we improve, a year-book of new examples of nervous strain could be published.  But fortunately, if we are nervous and short-sighted, we have a good share of brain and commonsense when it is once appealed to, and a few examples will open our eyes and set us thinking, to real and practical results.